HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Huntsville sculptor Everett Cox was just 7 years old when he saw something that defined his future -- a thumbprint in a cast bronze sculpture of a wolf.

"I realized 'somebody made that,'" said Cox, remembering the moment he saw that mark on the sculpture, one of a pair that graced the base of a staircase at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in California.

By the age of 10, Cox was making his own toy soldiers with molten lead and aluminum molds. Today, he creates sculpture in his studio and foundry at Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment.

Cox, 58, is probably best known for the nudes he casts in bronze. Their lifelike qualities are almost startling, looking as if the metal could crack open and the real woman behind the bronze could step out. Visitors to his studio, in fact, often ask him if he's seen one of the B-movies about wax museums in which characters get dipped in wax and turned into statues.

Creating these pieces, some of them life size, is far more complex than that, despite Cox's modest statement that "it's not that hard if you know a few things." For one thing, Cox is an engineer of sorts who makes his own molds and even some of his own tools. He has to bring architectural considerations to his works to make sure they'll stand up under their heavy weight of bronze, the primary medium in which he works.

He also does his own casting in a kiln set up at the back of his garage-like space at Lowe Mill and understands the processes and chemicals it takes to get bronze to look a certain color.

But, first, Cox is an artist.

On a recent afternoon, he was working on a bust of Zoe Knecht, the stepdaughter of Susan Knecht, who has a glass-blowing studio at Lowe Mill. "This gives me practice, keeps my hands in the clay," Cox said as he pulled a stool outside his studio for Zoe, 16, to sit on. He likes to work outside because the light is better and because people can see what he's doing and possibly stop by and ask questions.

To create any sculpture, Cox first builds an armature. That's another place where the latent engineer crops up. Cox has to figure out the placement of the metal rods on which he layers his clay. If it's a standing figure, he has to weld pieces together that will support, say, the angle of a leg. For a bust, he starts with a single straight rod topped with a metal bar. He then works with extruded clay, an eighth of an inch in diameter, layering in tiny bits until the image emerges.

"She sits on a stool and I look at her," Cox said, explaining how he combines the nuances of Zoe's personality and facial expressions into the bust he's working on. "I lot of people presume (modeling for a sculpture) is sitting there like a sphinx. We carry on a conversation, and I get to know her."

On this afternoon, Cox is using those bits of clay and a thin stick he made on his drill press to raise the angle of the cheekbones on the clay model. "I just shove clay until it looks like Zoe," Cox said.

Cox is carrying on an art form that dates back centuries, even before written communication, said Casey Downing, a fellow sculptor and Cox's longtime friend. The two met as college freshmen at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Cox went on to earn his bachelor of fine arts at Auburn University and received his master's degree, also in fine arts, from the University of Georgia.

Downing said Cox is one of the best figure sculptors in the region and brings an intimate quality to his work. "That's the difference between a really nice portrait and a mannequin," Downing said. "There's something alive about it if you've done your job right. There's a presence."

Downing lives in Mobile, but he and Cox talk all the time to compare techniques and talk about their work. Cox taught Downing how to do his own casting, but that's something he has now turned over to an apprentice.

Casting is a difficult and expensive process, with a single firing of the kiln costing $600 in gas alone, Cox said. "The crucible gets to 2,100 to 2,220 degrees Farenheit."

Doing his own casting, however, is the only way Cox can control his work to his satisfaction. Lowe Mill manager Marcia Freeland calls Cox "meticulous."

Most of the figure sculptures Cox does are commission pieces other than the ones he creates for himself. His many art history classes inform his work, and he chooses nude figures for a couple reasons.

First, the nude harkens back to the Greeks, who perfected so many art forms. The nude figure "is also the human form reduced to its basic bottom line," Cox said. By sculpting a nude figure, he can make sure the form is correct and then can add clothing or other elements to the work.

Sometimes, the nudes, from half to full size, shock people who glance in his studio at Lowe Mill. The work, however, "is not erotic at all," Cox said. "I'm not interested in that at all."

While his figure sculptures are probably what he is best known for, they're certainly not all Cox does. He recently completed a commissioned bas relief panel of the Anunciation of Mary for a parishioner at Saint William Catholic Church in Guntersville. On a recent afternoon, a metal gate he made for another Lowe Mill artist was leaning against the garage door outside his studio.

He also made bronze replacements for the original and deteriorating ceramic frogs on the sixth floor of the Terry Hutchens building in downtown. Look up the next time you're on the corner of Clinton Avenue and Jefferson Street, and you'll see them. He also created several cast iron pickets for the Church of Nativity, Episcopal, to replace ones that were damaged when a tree fell on them several years ago.

"You can't spot them," he said.

He's got a new abstract metal piece he's planning to do as it gets colder and he can't sculpt in his cavernous studio. It's an unusual work for him "because my mind doesn't work that way, except in this case," he said.

Cox is still learning, too, every time he works with someone or does a piece, and he has no plans to retire. "This is what I do," Cox said, surrounded by his sculptures. "And this is what I'll leave."